9/20/07: GOLD RAIDERS
GOLD RAIDERS (Chalong, 1983)
So about a week ago I went to this video store and they were clearing out their old VHS movies for a dollar. I selected one tape and the clerk tells that "these are a dollar each, but for 2 dollars, you can have as many as you can fit into a grocery bag." GOLD RAIDERS, dear friends, is one of those movies. I don't know how much the .17 cent price tag colored my opinion of it, but this was the surprise of a lifetime, or at the very least, the surprise of an evening home alone in front of the TV.
Holy smokes, amazing movie. Made in Thailand around 1984, this seems to be trying to cash in on RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, what with the silly title and its jungle adventure theme. But all similarities end there, and what the viewer can expect instead is one of the kookiest, most bugf*ck movies EVER MADE. Apparently the filmmakers were deathly afraid of boring their audience, so went to any lengths whatsoever to avoid this ever happening, and when they ran out of their own ideas, they had no trouble borrowing a handful from other, debatably better, movies.
Plot involves token anglo CIA dude (Robert Ginty) and his crew of intrepid Thai adventurers trying to recover some spook gold lost in a plane crash. Along the way they are distracted by an array of the craziest subplots ever committed to celluloid. One sequence involves a fishing trip where these Thai dudes chase and kill a giant fake fish with spears, which plays like a rather cut-rate JAWS extract (and serves no narrative purpose whatsoever, except perhaps to stress that they are REALLY good at fishing for monster fish). Later, while recovering boxes of LOST GOLD from a lake, the heroes are attacked by speargun-wielding scuba divers, and suddenly we find ourselves in the middle of THUNDERBALL ... replete with fun James Bond knockoff score! Furthering the Bond fetish, Ginty later reveals what he's been lugging around in a crate the whole time, an attack motorcycle "that runs on a crystal chamber and never needs gas," but still manages to smoke and fume like its on its last legs. This is no ordinary jungle attack crystal-powered motorcycle, though ... This one has what appears to a pup tent rolled up on it and attached to a frame, so when it is driven off a cliff, the tent unfolds into a hang glider! (And just wait until they attack an enemy camp with the half dozen missiles mounted on the handlebars!) For whatever reasons, the training wheels mounted on the sides are never addressed.
Another wonderful sequence involves a cave system infested with vampire bats that are about 3 feet wide and look like they were left over from FRIGHT NIGHT. Oh. My. God. And don't forget the bit where Ginty drives the super cycle over a gorge while balancing on a thin steel cable! SO TALENTED! I can see why the CIA recruited him because he is UTTERLY DOPE.
What else, what else ... Well, there's the Thai commando who looks a lot like Wayne Newton, who manages to keep his hair feathered even after scuba diving ... There's the hilarious dubbing that makes everyone sound like they are in the same room together, somewhere in Canada (judging by the accents) ... The insistence that the Thai characters, even though dubbed and with Western accents, still use their Thai names, one of which seems to be "Porn" ... The impulse to go all DIRTY DOZEN on us and kill off half the cast in the last 5 minutes, but not before holding off an entire Communist army by blocking one road with a tree stump ... There's even some legitimately good throat-slashings and bullet wounds, and one scene where a dog steals the prosthetic leg of the Communist general and he has to hop around on one foot during the firefight (!!!). Wrapping the whole affair up nicely are the hilariously illegible end credits, written in a hazy yellow and superimposed over a cloudy background scene, and then transferred in the wrong aspect ratio! All while a montage plays that shows all the dead characters' death scenes again! SIMPLY AMAZING.
I can only hope the other selections in my bag are half as good. I have high hopes for THE GREAT SMOKEY ROADBLOCK and THUMB TRIPPING doesn't look half bad either. Although I am thinking a return visit might be in order because I think I saw a copy of FIVE FOR HELL in there somewhere ...
So about a week ago I went to this video store and they were clearing out their old VHS movies for a dollar. I selected one tape and the clerk tells that "these are a dollar each, but for 2 dollars, you can have as many as you can fit into a grocery bag." GOLD RAIDERS, dear friends, is one of those movies. I don't know how much the .17 cent price tag colored my opinion of it, but this was the surprise of a lifetime, or at the very least, the surprise of an evening home alone in front of the TV.
Holy smokes, amazing movie. Made in Thailand around 1984, this seems to be trying to cash in on RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, what with the silly title and its jungle adventure theme. But all similarities end there, and what the viewer can expect instead is one of the kookiest, most bugf*ck movies EVER MADE. Apparently the filmmakers were deathly afraid of boring their audience, so went to any lengths whatsoever to avoid this ever happening, and when they ran out of their own ideas, they had no trouble borrowing a handful from other, debatably better, movies.
Plot involves token anglo CIA dude (Robert Ginty) and his crew of intrepid Thai adventurers trying to recover some spook gold lost in a plane crash. Along the way they are distracted by an array of the craziest subplots ever committed to celluloid. One sequence involves a fishing trip where these Thai dudes chase and kill a giant fake fish with spears, which plays like a rather cut-rate JAWS extract (and serves no narrative purpose whatsoever, except perhaps to stress that they are REALLY good at fishing for monster fish). Later, while recovering boxes of LOST GOLD from a lake, the heroes are attacked by speargun-wielding scuba divers, and suddenly we find ourselves in the middle of THUNDERBALL ... replete with fun James Bond knockoff score! Furthering the Bond fetish, Ginty later reveals what he's been lugging around in a crate the whole time, an attack motorcycle "that runs on a crystal chamber and never needs gas," but still manages to smoke and fume like its on its last legs. This is no ordinary jungle attack crystal-powered motorcycle, though ... This one has what appears to a pup tent rolled up on it and attached to a frame, so when it is driven off a cliff, the tent unfolds into a hang glider! (And just wait until they attack an enemy camp with the half dozen missiles mounted on the handlebars!) For whatever reasons, the training wheels mounted on the sides are never addressed.
Another wonderful sequence involves a cave system infested with vampire bats that are about 3 feet wide and look like they were left over from FRIGHT NIGHT. Oh. My. God. And don't forget the bit where Ginty drives the super cycle over a gorge while balancing on a thin steel cable! SO TALENTED! I can see why the CIA recruited him because he is UTTERLY DOPE.
What else, what else ... Well, there's the Thai commando who looks a lot like Wayne Newton, who manages to keep his hair feathered even after scuba diving ... There's the hilarious dubbing that makes everyone sound like they are in the same room together, somewhere in Canada (judging by the accents) ... The insistence that the Thai characters, even though dubbed and with Western accents, still use their Thai names, one of which seems to be "Porn" ... The impulse to go all DIRTY DOZEN on us and kill off half the cast in the last 5 minutes, but not before holding off an entire Communist army by blocking one road with a tree stump ... There's even some legitimately good throat-slashings and bullet wounds, and one scene where a dog steals the prosthetic leg of the Communist general and he has to hop around on one foot during the firefight (!!!). Wrapping the whole affair up nicely are the hilariously illegible end credits, written in a hazy yellow and superimposed over a cloudy background scene, and then transferred in the wrong aspect ratio! All while a montage plays that shows all the dead characters' death scenes again! SIMPLY AMAZING.
I can only hope the other selections in my bag are half as good. I have high hopes for THE GREAT SMOKEY ROADBLOCK and THUMB TRIPPING doesn't look half bad either. Although I am thinking a return visit might be in order because I think I saw a copy of FIVE FOR HELL in there somewhere ...
posted by figurebuilder at 1:20 PM
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